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Bloc Takes On Entrenched Kurdish Parties in Iraq

Supporters of Gorran, a Kurdish opposition movement, campaigned last month in Sulaimaniya, where it poses a strong challenge to the Iraqi president’s party.Credit
Ayman Oghanna for The New York Times

KIRKUK, Iraq — A third political movement is waging a surprisingly strong challenge in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, threatening decades of domination here by two entrenched and, many say, corrupt parties.

Its name in Kurdish, Gorran, means change, and officially it is not a party yet. If successful in this Sunday’s parliamentary elections, it could redefine relations with the Iraqi central government, which are fraught with issues that include how to share oil wealth and where to draw the borders of the Kurdistan region.

Leaders of the two Kurdish ruling families are taking the threat seriously, especially Jalal Talabani, Iraq’s president, a wily political survivor close to the United States. He is waging an intense campaign that has included violence and intimidation.

Gorran’s ascendancy could upend that balance; some analysts believe it could win as many seats as Mr. Talabani’s party.

“At minimum, the election results will further blur the lines between Kurdish nationalism, political expediency and economic opportunism,” Denise Natali, the dean and a scholar at the American University of Iraq in Sulaimaniya, wrote in a report for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Gorran’s appeal has gone beyond Dohuk, Erbil and Sulaimaniya, the three provinces that constitute the Kurdish region. It has spilled into disputed territories in Diyala, Kirkuk, Nineveh and Salahuddin, provinces claimed by both Kurds and the central government.

The movement has taken particular aim at Mr. Talabani and his party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, at a time when its relations are warming with the other ruling party, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, led by Massoud Barzani, Mr. Talabani’s old nemesis turned “strategic partner” after 2003.

Mr. Barzani, the region’s president, who is also close to the Americans, has used Mr. Talabani’s weakness and presence in Baghdad to consolidate his power.

Although Mr. Barzani’s and Mr. Talabani’s parties are running jointly in the elections under the Kurdistan Alliance slate, they have been feverishly campaigning separately. Voters this time can choose individual candidates instead of just closed election lists, as they did in 2005, and this will determine the weight of each party within any prospective coalition.

Campaigning among all Kurdish factions has been perilously provocative in disputed places like Kirkuk, which Kurds want annexed to their region amid strong objections by Arabs, Turkmens and other groups.

Emotions are so high in Kirkuk and other contested border areas that in January the American military established a three-way security arrangement with the Iraqi Army and Kurdish forces to protect the elections and ease tensions there.

The convoy was filled with security force members, including a man in a military uniform brandishing an assault rifle with a yellow ribbon tied to its barrel.

Photo

Campaigners for the Kurdistan Democratic Party included a member of the Kurdish security forces last month in Kirkuk.Credit
Ayman Oghanna for The New York Times

Leading Gorran’s campaign in Kirkuk is Hassan Hamid Rahim, a former commander with the Kurdish pesh merga fighters who charged into the city with American troops in 2003 to claim it for Kurds before he was ordered to leave.

Like most Gorran leaders, the former commander, Mr. Rahim, better known as Uncle Rostam, was until recently a member of Mr. Talabani’s party and his comrade in the Kurdish struggle during Saddam Hussein’s rule.

But in an interview in Kirkuk he called Mr. Talabani “a dictator just like Saddam” for blocking all attempts at party reform.

Ala Talabani, a Parliament member who is Mr. Talabani’s niece, acknowledged her party’s shortcomings but said Mr. Talabani’s opposition to Mr. Hussein before 2003 and his efforts to safeguard Kurdish interests should never be forgotten.

“In Europe you always talk about the future,” Ms. Talabani said in an interview. “Here you have to mention the past, our martyrs.”

At a recent pro-Talabani rally in Koi Sanjaq, near Sulaimaniya, children chanted, “We would starve to death without you.”

Mr. Talabani’s wife, Hero Ibrahim Ahmed, is in charge of the campaign in Sulaimaniya, where security forces loyal to their party openly take part in rallies while violently clamping down on Gorran’s supporters.

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An image of President Jalal Talabani, carried at a rally for his party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, near his hometown.Credit
Ayman Oghanna For The New York Times

In one recent instance, security force members in white sport utility vehicles covered with pro-Talabani posters broke up a Gorran election gathering made up largely of young men.

In a speech to hundreds of supporters in Sulaimaniya on Thursday, Mr. Talabani was clearly referring to Gorran’s threat to his party when he said, “The enemies of Kurds and the union who dream of destroying the union will be entombed along with their dreams.”

Tensions have reached a boiling point in a society awash with weapons. Last month, a scuffle between supporters from each camp spiraled into a brief firefight that left three people wounded.

Kurdo Qasim, another Gorran leader, vowed to drive Mr. Talabani out of Sulaimaniya on Election Day, near the anniversary of the Kurdish uprising during the first Persian Gulf war.

“It will be a double celebration,” Mr. Qasim boasted during an interview in Khanaqin, a town south of Sulaimaniya mired in the land dispute between Kurds and Baghdad.

Mr. Barzani has watched all of this with apprehension. In a speech two weeks ago in the regional capital, Erbil, he lambasted Gorran officials for oratory that crossed “the reddest of lines.”

He said that if they persisted they would be “taught a lesson” and kicked out of the region.

Mr. Barzani’s party is expected to carry Dohuk and win seats in neighboring Nineveh, but it does face competition from Gorran in Erbil, where the Barzanis have had ironclad control.

Some public servants in Erbil claim they are being threatened with dismissal unless they vote for his party’s candidates.

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Credit
The New York Times

“I will vote Gorran if I can get away with it,” said a police officer on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

But the young are the real wild card. About 60 percent of the region’s estimated 4.5 million people are under 25 and have no memory of the old struggles: what they see are corruption and a lack of democracy.

Many acknowledge that Gorran, essentially a splinter group from one of the ruling parties, may not be an ideal vehicle for their aspirations but believe that it is, for now, the best choice.

“This is a country not worth living in,” said Peshawa Khalid, 22, a resident of Piramagroon, a suburb of Sulaimaniya that was the scene of violent demonstrations in December over poor public services. “We want to change it,” he added, echoing one of Gorran’s popular election refrains.

Bomb Kills 3 in Najaf

BAGHDAD (AP) — A car bomb exploded near a bus for Shiite pilgrims in Najaf, Iraq, on Saturday, killing at least three people and wounding dozens, officials said.

Blasts in other cities have killed dozens of people this week, underscoring warnings that insurgents would attempt to disrupt Sunday’s national elections with violence.

In Najaf, a group of Iranian and Iraqi pilgrims were waiting to board a bus after visiting a Shiite holy shrine when the blast occurred about 100 yards away, said Ahmed Fakhir, an Iraqi interpreter who was with the Iranian pilgrims and was wounded. The explosion destroyed two buses, blew a small crater in the ground and shattered nearby shop and hotel windows.

Shiite religious pilgrims to Iraq’s shrines, including many from Iran, have long been a favored target of extremist Sunni militants.

A version of this article appears in print on March 7, 2010, on page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: Rising Coalition Takes On Entrenched Parties in Iraq’s Kurdish Zone. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe